Friday, July 24, 2009

Faces are tough. It's amazing how sensitive we are to minor irregularities in proportion and symmetry. I remember when I was working on the Stareater comic (drawn in pencil on bristol), I'd end up erasing all the way through the board in places -- usually when a face wouldn't come together right. Doing it digitally is easier (because you can bump an eye up a pixel if it looks hinky) but also harder (because you can spend hours bumping an eye up and down by a pixel, trying to figure out which way works better).

Dialogue is a whole other thing, and I freely admit that I'm bad at it. I'll be revising the text right up to the end, I'm sure. I had just read Riddley Walker (a post-apocalyptic novel written entirely in a massively-simplified pidgin English), and for a few days I had one of my characters talking like a chimney sweep. You have to be careful what you read while you're working on something like this. It all sticks.

The font I'm using is called Anime Ace 2,0. It's free, which makes me think it must be low-quality. But as far as I can see, it works fine. Tell me if I've missed some glaring defect. I'd hate to come across as a font noob.